“Something about him reminded me of one of those figures from old-fashioned playing cards or the sort used by fortune-tellers, a print straight from the pages of incunabulum: his presence was both funereal and incandescent, like a curse dressed in Sunday best.”

I particularly love this: a curse dressed in Sunday best. Isn’t it brilliant? I took this thick library book on vacation, and got so wrapped up in its story of love and mystery, murder and redemption that I didn’t have a shred of interest in seeing distant relations at the sea. I ignored everything — Avalon and aunties, cousins and crabbing — until I finished the book.

But once home and the tale told, I still was loathe to return it the library. I didn’t want to part with the meandering story and its inhabitants (like the villain Francisco Javier Fumero, described above). I took the book with me on errands and reread favorite sections, but the library put me on notice and fined me for every day I kept it. So I let it go, and by Sunday all that remained were the words about the curse afloat in my rum-and-lime-soaked brain.